Lately, as Mugg - in the most exaggerated and ungraceful manner - pointed out, I had a tendency to shuffle up my English vocabulary. In shock I discovered that things I thought my whole life are A turn out to be B. It all started one casual weekend when we decided to make salmon chili, a recipe passed down by his ultra-health-conscious friend from school. I volunteered to get grocery, among which were scallions. Mugg's face turned stone when I showed up with pinkish tiny onions, "These are shallots, you know that, right?" We raced to Wikipedia, and to Mugg's amusement I sunk into a state of temporary disbelief, as if my childhood had just been robbed by the discovery that Santa Claus were fictional. "It's okay" he consoled as I kept knocking my head an hour later, "You are not native." To which I pouted indignantly, "I used to win spelling bees during a class full of American kids!" Obviously a spelling bee trophy can hardly justify my messed up English skills, but since I am a girl and I just lost my bet over tiny onions, Mugg chuckled and offered to clean the dishes.

To my horror, I soon discovered in subsequent weeks that the matter of shallots vs. scallions wasn't the only leak in my memory pipe. Yams turn out to be not sweet potatoes; people travel on a subway, not in; "If I was" is as acceptable as "if I were"; and a flurry of nuances that I thought I had mastered.

I soon develop a habit to make Mariam Webster my best buddy. Like now, just 5 minutes ago, before putting down the title of this blog as "cramp" I cautiously performed a quick check to find out that cramp (v) as in a tension in muscles is very different than cram (v) as in studying really hard for an exam. That, by the way, is what I mean to write in this blog: I am cramming real hard for my CFA.